Ask HN: Anyone know why Twitter's initial page load has become so slow?

I don't remember when I first noticed it but it has been on the order of months that anytime I navigate to twitter for the first time, there is an abnormally long load time. I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this and I was curious about what could be the cause? After the initial load, the site is as fast as usual.

I know they made a big deal about switching from Rails to Java but that was a couple years ago, I believe. Is it possible they moved to some front-end framework that requires a large initial payload to be delivered? I'm actually doubtful of that as it would have to be enormous to cause the type of delay I experience. I am a total dunce when it comes to security but I've wondered if it has to do with some kind of slowdown as a result of not handling SSL "stuff" well? This has been bugging me for a while now, so I thought I'd ask you fine folks if you've observed the same thing.